New Chicks

New chick on the block!

Well  I have six new chicks this week. Offspring of Earl and one of my EE girls. You saw Earl the other day and I'd show you a picture of mamma but she is molting and having a bad feather day.

These are some great look little round puffballs.

another yellow and grey chick

Altogether there are five chicks from the Easter egger girl,  three grey and yellow and two red. One of the red ones tho has a lot of grey/yellow fuzz on it's body and mostly just red on it's head and back

The last chick here is from the Wellie/leghorn girl. It is much bigger than the EE chicks.

I'm thinking the grey and yellow ones might be what they call lavender, but I'll have to wait for them to get a little bigger to be sure I think.

Earl Grey, Stud Muffin

Stud muffin Earl Grey being admired by one of the ladies.

Gosh can't beleive it's been so long since I posted. So much is going on with my job, it has been really crazy. Some weeks I have worked 60 hours, barely had time to sleep and feed birds let alone do anything else!

Here is my Easter egger boy, Earl Grey. His daddy was a Lavender Orpington and his mamma was an Easter egger. He has really filled out the past couple of months! You know he is so pretty I might just have to paint his picture!

look at that chest!

Check out that chest! That is a lot of meat on a fairly small bird. He gets that from the Orpington blood. I also love the coloring of his feathers on his chest.

Wide Load!

When he was younger he looked a bit narrow in the hips, but as he has grown he has filled in and is nearly as wide in the back as he is in the front.

Nice and wide, front to back!

Chickens should be wide through the back, for ease of laying eggs without problems. Some of my EE girls are pinched in the tail, so I'm hoping that their daughters from Earl will be wider than they are.

Remember back in March, when all those little chicks pictured at the top of this page hatched? Well here are some all grown up. There are 17 girls and about a dozen boys. The boys are destined for freezer camp and are still trying to grow some back and tail feathers; they are actually pretty ugly right now so I didn't take any pics of them today.

Lots of soft browns and golds, some of their mammas were Easter eggers, some were Welsummer or Welsummer/Leghorn crosses and this is the typical female coloration for those breeds. Some have the tiny pea comb of the Easter egger and clean faces, while some have beards and muffs. The pea comb is the best indicator that a hen will lay a blue egg. The gene for blue egg shell color is tightly linked to that for the pea comb. The girls that have single, regular combs could lay green or even brown. Only time will tell.

Love the beards & muffs!

Now those are some cheek poofs!

I just realized that there is a shadow from the chicken wire fence on that last girl! That's not a real pattern on her.

In other news I have managed a little of progress on the new chicken house. The first section is roofed and I should be able to get the second section roof done on my next days off. I lucked into some great pallets, a full 4x8 feet, exactly what I needed for the bottom part of the divider walls inside. Solid bottom walls are best to keep roosters from fighting with each other through a fence.

Chicks & Ducks Oh My!

Ducklings hatched May 15

My day job has been pretty crazy of late so I just haven't had time to take pictures and put a post together. Here is a little update.


The Welsh Harlequin ducklings that hatched in May are growing like weeds. The are now in that gangling teenage phase and look like little dinosaurs. They are still for sale, so if you are near Globe, Arizona email me at hysong AT cableone   DOT net.

Young Easter egger with a juvenile Welsh Harlequin drake.

Also available are two older brothers of the little ducklings. All of the older girls have been sold except one I"m keeping for myself.

See that Easter egger in there with him? I just love their poofy cheeks. That comes from their Ameraucauna parentage.

Easter Eggers

The fun thing about Easter eggers is that they can be any color and pattern. They are not a true breed, but a mix of Ameraucauna with other breeds. True Ameraucauna only come in 8 recognized colors. EE's can look like anything. The EE girls also tend to come into lay quicker than the purebreds.

Some of these are from two Easter egger parents and some have an Easter egger daddy with a Welsummer mom. They should lay a light olive green egg, although plain brown is also a possibility. The ones with two EE parents will lay light blue or green eggs.

Buff Orpingtons

The Buff Orpingtons hatched in March are somewhat disappointing. About half of them have yellow legs when they should be white. So all the  yellow legged boys will be heading for freezer camp, while the yellow legged girls are up for sale as layers. You would not want to breed from them and get more yellow legs, but they are super friendly and will make nice, light brown egg layers. A couple of these try to sit in my lap or even fly up on my shoulder when I hang out with them.

Easter Eggers hatched May 3

I still have some Easter egger chicks which hatched May 3. These are younger siblings to the ones in the picture above. The boys are just getting their red combs so we should be able to sex them pretty well, at least 75% accurate right now. These are all for sale and if you take the whole bunch I'll make you a smoking deal because I need pen space!

eggs from 6-17-13

I have such fun with my birds and I love to collect all the different colors of eggs! I just wish the camera could pick up the subtle differences in shades in the blue and green ones, they are very hard to photograph!

From L to R: Black Copper Marans, Easter egger, Buff Orpington and Buff crosses, Welsummers.

Ducklings

Harley & family

Last summer a friend gave me some ducklings, mostly runner ducks crossed with Welsh Harlequins. But one drake looked to be pure WH. Harley is really beautiful with his emerald green head and wing bars, with black and brown on his white body. So I kept him and I got a pretty female from my friend too. She's a little light and does not have as much color on her as I've seen on other WH girls.

She doesn't have a name, I just think of her as Harley's girl or Mamma Duck. She started laying at New Years and laid every day, without a single break until mid April when she went broody.

Now I had read that hatching duck eggs in an incubator is harder than chicken eggs. But I had several hatches of 90-100%. Mamma duck is not very big and was trying to cover too many eggs so I put some in the incubator and left her with 13.

Last week Mamma hatched 10 of her 13 eggs and 2 more babies hatched in the incubator. As soon as they were dried off I gave them to her and everyone has been doing fine.  Harley doesn't bother the babies at all. Oh but don't make Mamma upset because Harley will come to her rescue and Mamma will charge if you try to get to the babies!

All of these babies are for sale, so if you are looking for Welsh Harlequins and are near Globe, Arizona, contact me! (hysong AT cableone DOT net)

A New Chicken Pen

Chain link dog kennels chicken pens

 I have chickens every where right now. Nothing has gone according to plan, so the new coop and runs are not ready yet. So when these dog kennels were advertised locally I jumped on them. A little beat up, a couple holes, I've been working on rewiring them where needed to make them more secure.

 Hard to see, but there are two of those kennels with gates in them, one at each end. Then there are some plain panels to help make a larger area. The original owner cut holes in the sides of the kennels so the center area was accessible to his dogs. Here I've put a leftover chain link panel on top of the far left kennel and wired up some tin.

 New Pens in progress

The idea is to close in this end on the side and back and make this the roosting and nesting area. Covering this end should also help give some shade in the afternoon.

Today when I got home I remembered a large panel of siding nailed to a light weight frame. It was part of the roof of a pop up tent trailer. It covered most of this side, but I didn't get a pic yet.

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In other news, I'm over run with eggs! The light tan ones at 3:00 are from my Buff Orpingtons and Buff crosses. the blue and greens are of course from the easter eggers. In the top are some Welsummer and Wellie crosses and the two dark eggs in the center compartment are from my Black Copper Marans pullets that have recently started laying.

I am not sure who belongs to this gigantor egg. At first I thought it was from one of the Black Copper girls, but when I looked at it again, I'm thinking that it might just be from a young Welsummer pullet in the same pen, as she has suddenly got a red comb. I suppose time will tell. 

More New Layers

New Pullet Eggs

Well some more new girls have begun laying. I have a pen of Black Copper Marans, which lay a very dark egg (well they are supposed to, but sometimes they don't lay as dark as the breeder is hoping for). In with them are some crossbreed girls which are about the same age, some of which have begun laying.

In this picture I found the egg on the right on Thurs and today I collected the egg on the left. Probably from the same girl. One of the Marans girls has a pretty red comb, so I think it belongs to her. I'll try and get some pictures of them up in the next couple of days.

Also today, in another pen one of my young Welsummer pullets left a cute little egg. I love all the freckles! More ducks and chicks are hatching and the weather has been pretty warm and dry. Going to have to water the garden this weekend!

The Chicks Have Arrived!

Chickies!

Well this was a great hatch this time. I am loving this big redwood incubator, it's keeps the temperature and humidity up really well. If I have to open the door, they go right back up where they should be in a just a couple of minutes. Temperature and humidity are really critical when you are incubating eggs. These little guys hatched right on schedule, the early bird was out early in the morning of day 21, which was April 7. About half of them had hatched by the evening.



I had set 46 eggs from my three easter egger hens, a young Welsummer pullet, an old Welsummer hen and a Welsummer / Leghorn cross. They were all bred by my pretty red easter egger rooster, Lil' Red.

Lil' Red

I'll have to take some pictures of their mammas, I don't have many on the computer right now and none of them very good. I had to be gone overnight and when I got home on Monday I pulled all the now dry and fluffy chicks out and marked them so I would know who their parents are when they get bigger. Now there was one egg that had pipped (had a little hole in it) on Sunday. The chick had made no progress at all in almost 36 hours, but was still alive and talking to me. I could see the chick was kind of stuck and beginning to dry out even though the incubator was at 65% humidity. So I chipped some of the shell off and put it back in. In a little while the chick was able to finish hatching on it's own.

The girls from the easter egger hens will lay some shade of blue or light green. The girls from the Welsummer hens will lay some shade of olive, probably from light to a medium shade of olive green.

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Now I've been raising chickens for a while and I don't usually go gaga over chicks, although they are cute. But these guys with their little cheek puffs are extra cute!

Not all of them have puffy cheeks, but a lot of them do and some have bigger cheeks than others. The cheek puffs and later a beard are traits from the Ameraucauna breed of chicken, which is what Easter Eggers are bred from.

There is a range of colors and patterns, most of which will change before they are adults.

More Chickies on the Way

46 eggs set to hatch on 4/7/13

Well I have 46 chicken eggs set to hatch this weekend. The girls from this hatch will all lay some shade of blue or green egg, those hatching from the brown eggs will lay olive.

Ducks and chicks set to hatch 4/14 and 4/21

There are also 29 more chicken and 9 ducks due on April 14. Then on April 21 there are 12 Muscovy duck eggs, 7 Welsh Harlequin ducks and 27 more chickens due.

Easter eggers & Olive eggers going in to hatch.

And tonight I set 27 more chicken eggs!

It's Still All About The Chickens

Buff Orpington chicks

Well it continues to be all about the chickens around here. (oh and yes, some ducks). Some Buff Orpington chicks hatched last weekend and some more are hatching today.

The weather is beautiful, though it is almost too warm out in the sun.

Welsh Harlequin Ducklings

hoop coop

Do you remember the hoop coop I built the first of the year? Remember how little the chickies were? Well all of those babies are growing up. The boys are starting to crow and a couple precocious girls have begun to lay tiny little eggs. (ignore all the junk laying around....)

The new chicken house

I've been working on the new chicken house whenever I can. It is post and beam construction and has required the digging of 8 post holes through rock and the caliche which is like concrete. Sometimes it has taken me two days to dig one hole. But I do go slow and easy and take frequent breaks. I don't have time to hurt myself! But this morning I finally got the last hole dug! The last four posts are plumb, braced and the concrete is poured! Oh Yeah! I might even have a drink to celebrate! The rest of the construction will be easy peasy compared to what the post holes have been!

And why do I go to so much trouble? Because I am having a lot of fun with my chickens. I love to get all the different colors of eggs each day. Can't wait until my Black Copper Marans start laying and add dark chocolate brown to the egg basket!

Eggs from March 12, 2013

SURPRISE!

pullet eggs

Well I had quite a little surprise when I went out to feed the babies this morning. Well I suppose at 3 & 4 months old they aren't really babies any more. Teenagers now, I guess.

Well there were two tiny little pullet eggs in the coop.

tiny first eggs

Two little cross breed pullets had laid their first eggs. These girls are only 16 weeks old. You can see how tiny their eggs are. They will get larger in a few weeks.

Their mammas were the barred rock banties hens I bought last year and their daddy was a mean Buff Orpington rooster. When he became even more human aggressive than he had been, I had mean rooster soup.

 These two girls are very sweet and calm natured. When I get the new  chicken house and pens built I think I will breed them to my Easter Egger boys and see what we get.